Saturday, 29 March 2008

A friend rescued this for me on a walk in Sydney, and ferried it lovingly to me here in Canberra. It languished in a pot for a while, in partial shade, until I figured out that what it really wanted was sun, and lots of it, thanks. Suddenly it's producing leaves and pups and looking healthy and happy. It has the crinkle-cut leaves of a Kalanchoe, though I don't know what variety he is. His leaves are pale blue-grey with a delicate pink fringe. He's quite dramatically back-lit here, which makes him look far greener than he actually is.

Wednesday, 26 March 2008

Hmm. I'm not sure what this is, except most likely a Sempervivum—there was no tag on the plant when I bought him. He has lovely purple leaves, fringed with green, with the saw-toothed edge you get on Aeoniums.

Wednesday, 19 March 2008

It wasn't the cat digging holes in my garden and uprooting plants. It was starlings. Bold little guys, too—I found one standing amongst the ruins one morning, staring at me with cocked head as if to say "Well, I like grubs. Is there somewhere better to get them?"

I've now covered the bed with stones in the hopes of discouraging the noisy little blighters. A nice little side effect of this is that it looks rather lovely with my plants set off against the white.

Tuesday, 18 March 2008

I've somehow ended up with four runyoniis. One I bought, one is a cutting from that first plant, and the other two were given to me. This year is the first time they've flowered. His flowers have the same shape as my imbricata, but are a vibrant orange. Strangely, my larger runyonii is producing flowers that are recognisably the same as this one, but deformed somehow—the blooms are fully open like little stars, and each bloom has something wrong with it, like a missing petal or an unformed stamen. It's very odd.

Monday, 17 March 2008

...at least, I think that's what this guy is. This was a gift from my aunt, who gave me a whole tray of succulents some months ago. He's growing happily in the garden now, putting out new pups despite being regularly uprooted by my cat.

[Edit: this could be Gasteria bicolor. I'll keep an eye out for flowers and maybe that will clear it up!]

Friday, 14 March 2008

I've blogged this guy before, but currently he's in full growth mode, sending up tender green shoots in vast supply. Every time I look at him he's grown a new shoot. I have two of these in my garden—one is a bit that broke off the larger plant, which is the guy in this picture. The bigger plant is a good two feet long now, and bowing under the weight of its own leaves. The leaves are magnificent—masses of undulating silver waves. They are quite delicate though, and hold fingerprints if you touch them.

Wednesday, 12 March 2008

Walking to a friend's house, I go past a garden sporting a huge version of this guy in the front yard. It's a bush, quite sprawling, about 3 feet high and the same amount of spread. It's very impressive, and every time I walk past it I find myself just touching the leaves, but not able to bring myself to snap a bit off as a cutting. So I bought one of my own.

Monday, 10 March 2008

I had a productive weekend—pulled all the creeper off the front of the house and replaced it with a lovely pair of port wine magnolias (I've lusted after port wines for ever, and now I have two!). The front bed is now free of weeds and is full of sedums and cotyledons. I also finally potted up some of my showier succulents into a trio of nice pots I got at the garden shop the last time I was down there with my parents. From left to right—Kalanchoe marmorata, Crassula argentea, and Aeonium arboreum.

Saturday, 8 March 2008

I have a very small number of aloes and yuccas in my collection—every now and then, despite the fact that I tell myself not to buy them, I end up bringing them home anyway. This is one of those 'why did you buy him' plants. What can I say? He's cute and spiky. He seems to be doing well, already producing a couple of pups after only a month in the ground. I'll probably have to move him when Winter arrives—he doesn't like frost.

He was labelled as dawsonii, but in fact he might be encholirioides. He's too small to be able to tell the difference, so I'll have to wait until he produces a flower to know for sure.

Friday, 7 March 2008

One of my two 'chalk sticks' plants. This is the smaller of the two. He actually flowered this year, but they weren't very impressive blooms, and although I noticed them, I didn't manage to get a photo of them. Not a good one, anyway. Here you can see the dead flower-heads with their seeds puffing away.

Waves... This guy was a present from my next door neighbour, who left it with instructions to propagate a cutting for him by the time he gets back from his trip to Italy. I've currently got two cuttings on the go, both of which are growing heartily. He's a lovely little bushy tree of a thing, with that nice segmented trunk I showed a photo of last week.

Saturday, 1 March 2008

I bought this today while out shopping with my parents. He called to me and I just had to have him. He's got big juicy pale green leaves and literally masses of these pink flowers all over him. I have another one of these, which apparently gets a red flower, but I suspect I haven't been giving that one enough light. They're both going to go out in a new bed I'm building at the front of the house, so I'll see how they do next year.

This poor little guy got hit quite badly by my little green caterpillar plague—many of his leaves got eaten up from the inside out. Still, he seems to have survived okay, and the nasty hole left by the bugs is now full of new growth—tiny red leaves not even old enough to have formed the splotches.